The young atheling's cheeks flushed with rage and shame as he remembered the day he had deceived his mother. Had had the priest read one of her much-loved English poems over and over until he had learned it by heart. Then had stood in front of her reciting it and pretending to read from the book he had coveted. Where was the book now? Some priest had taken it. Probably had scraped the writing from it so he could inscribe on it some saintly text.
The bishop's voice rasped on. “So, young man, you do need me. And not only for the power of my subordinates, the power I lend you. For I have allies, too, yes, and superiors. You are not the only Christian king in England. The pious Burgred of Mercia, he knows his duty. The young man you dispossessed of Norfolk, Alfgar the alderman, and his worthy father Wulfgar, whom the pagans mutilated—they know their duty too. Tell me, are there none of your thanes and aldermen who might not follow one of them? As king?”
“The thanes of Wessex will only follow a man of Wessex.”
“Even if they are told different? If the order comes—from Rome?”
The name hung in the air. Alfred paused, contemptuous reply checked on his lips. Once before in his lifetime Wessex had challenged Rome: when his brother Ethelbald had married his father's widow against all the rules of the Church. The word had come, the threats had been made. Ethelbald had died soon after—no one knew what of —the bride had been returned to her father, king of the Franks. They had not let Ethelbald's body lie in Winchester.
The bishop smiled, knowing his words struck home. “You see, lord king, you have no choice. And what you do does not matter in any case. It is only a test of your loyalty. The man you supported—Sheaf the son of the heathen jarl, the Englishman who was brought up as a Christian and then turned his back on it, the apostate, worse than any pagan, worse than the Boneless One himself—he has no more than weeks to live. His enemies ring him round. Believe me! I hear news that you do not.
“Sever your bond with him at once. Show your obedience to the Church your Mother.”
The bishop leaned back in his new-carved chair, sure of his power, anxious to mark an ascendancy which would last as long as the young man in front of him might live.
“King though you may yet be,” he said, “you are in our minster now. You have our leave to go. Go. And issue the orders I demand.”
The poem he had learned for his mother years ago came back suddenly to the young atheling's mind. It had been a poem of wise advice for warriors, a poem from before Christian times.
“I will obey your words,” he said, rising humbly. “And I must beg you to forgive the errors of my youth, while I thank you for your prudent direction.”
Weakling! thought the bishop.
He hears news that I do not? wondered the king.
To anyone who knew him—and to the many who did not—the marks of defeat and shame and ignominious flight in the depths of winter, all were visible on Ivar Ragnarsson's face.
The terrible eyes were still there, the eyes under frozen lashes that never blinked. But there was something in them that had not been there before: an absence, a withdrawal. Ivar walked like a man with something forever on his mind, slowly, absently, almost painfully, shorn of the lithe grace that had once marked him out.
It was still there when needed. The long flight from the fields of Norfolk across England to his brothers' base at York had not been an easy one. Men who had slipped out of sight when the Great Army passed that way before now emerged from every lane and byroad as a mere pair of exhausted men cantered back. Ivar and the faithful horse-swain Hamal, who had ridden to save him from the Way. At least six times the pair had been ambushed by angry peasants, local thanes, and the border-guards of king Burgred.
Ivar had dealt contemptuously with them all. Before the pair were out of Norfolk he had slashed the heads from two churls driving a farm-cart, taken their leather jackets and blanket coats, handed them to Hamal without a word. By the time they reached York his kills had been beyond count.
Three trained warriors at once could not stand against him, reported Hamal to a curious, fascinated audience. He means to prove he is still the Champion of the North.
Takes a lot of proving now, his audience muttered, the carls of the Army talking freely as was their right. Go with twenty long hundreds, come back with one man. He can be beaten.
That was what Ivar could not forget. His brothers, plying him with hot mead in front of the fire in their quarters by the minster, they had seen it. Seen too that their brother, never safe, now could not be trusted at all in any matter that required calculation. It had not broken their famous unity—nothing ever would—but now, whenever they talked among themselves, there were three and one, where once there had been four.
They had seen the change the first night. Silently, their eyes had met, silently they did what they had done before, telling none of their men, not admitting it even to each other. They had chosen a slave-girl from the Dales, wrapped her in a sail, gagged and bound her, thrust her into Ivar's quarters at dead of night while he lay, unsleeping and expectant.
In the morning they had come and taken away, in the wooden chest they had used before, what remained. Ivar would not run mad for a while, not fall into the berserk mood. Yet no sensible man felt anything but fear in his presence.
“He's coming,” called a monk, poised at the entrance to the great workshop where the minster-men of York toiled for their allies-turned-masters. The slaves sweating at forge, vice or rope-walk redoubled their efforts. Ivar would kill the man he saw standing still.
The scarlet cloak and silver helmet stalked through the doorway, stood glaring round. Erkenbert the deacon, the only man whose behavior did not change, turned to meet him.
Ivar jerked a thumb at the workmen. “All ready? Ready now?” He spoke the jargon mixed of English and Norse that the Army and the churchmen had learned that winter.
“Enough of both to try.”
“The dart-throwers? The stone-throwers?”
“See.”
Erkenbert clapped his hands. Immediately the monks shouted orders, their slaves began to wheel and tug at a line of machines. Ivar watched them, his face blank. After his brothers had taken the chest away, he had lain without moving for a day and a night, his cloak over his face. Then, as every man in the army knew, he had stood up, walked to the door of his room, and screamed to the sky: “Sigvarthsson did not beat me! It was the machines!”
Since then, since he had called for Erkenbert and the learned ones of York to obey his wishes, the forge-din had not ceased.
Outside the workshop, the slaves set up the dart-thrower, identical to the one that had broken the first assault on York, inside the minster-precinct itself, training across a furlong of open space to the far wall. There a dozen churls hung a great straw target. Others wound feverishly on the new-forged cogs.
“Enough!” Erkenbert himself stepped across, checked the alignment of the barbed javelin, fixed Ivar with his eye, handed him the thong attached to its iron toggle.
Ivar jerked it. The toggle flew sideways, clanging unnoticed from his helmet, the line rising and falling in the air, a monstrous thump. Before the eye could follow it, the dart was buried deep—quivering in its straw bed.
Ivar dropped the string, turned. “The other.”
This time the slaves tugged forward a strange machine. Like the twist-shooter, it had a wooden frame of stout beams. This time the cogwheels were not on top but at the side. They twisted a single rope, embedded in its strands, a wooden rod. At the end of the rod, a heavy sling, its pouch just clearing the ground. The rod quivered against its retaining-bolt as the slaves turned the levers.
“This is the stone-thrower,” declared Erkenbert.
“Not like the one that broke my ram?”
The deacon smiled with satisfaction. “No. That was a great machine that threw a boulder. But many men were needed to move it, and it could shoot only once. This throws smaller stones. No man has made such a machine since the days of the Romans. But I, Erkenbert, the humble servant of God, I have read the words in our
